


The Borrowed Sun

by 10moonymhrivertam



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Carlos gets to swear, Cecil Might be Human or Inhuman, Cecil is vaguely described, Duplicate characters, Episode Fix-it, M/M, POV Carlos (Welcome to Night Vale), Protective Cecil, Tiny City, episode 107: the missing sky, i did math for this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-01
Updated: 2019-02-01
Packaged: 2019-10-20 06:53:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17617604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/10moonymhrivertam/pseuds/10moonymhrivertam
Summary: Carlos wakes to an empty lab and an unfamiliar void in the sky. What to do?





	The Borrowed Sun

**Author's Note:**

> Huntokar may be the one that moved the city...BUT CARLOS IS THE ONE WHO FIGURED OUT IT WAS A CITY OF TINY PEOPLE AND IMMEDIATELY JUMPED INTO IT WITH HIS GIANT SMASHY FEET. LOOK UPON YOUR WORK, CARLOS. AND FIX IT.
> 
> *
> 
> For reference, I was thinking four inches tall for the tiny city. (6ft=72in, 72/4=18)
> 
> (Otherworld giants=50ft, 50/6=8.33)

Carlos’s head throbbed. That was never good, but it wasn’t always  _ bad _ _._ He sat up slowly so he could take stock. A glance around the room showed him that he was on a lonely cot in an empty, tiled room. It smelled faintly of sulfur, not unlike the lab had before the scientists had moved into it. His stomach sank as the observation hit him. Could this possibly be the lab? A lab with no scientists...

His head spun as he remembered the alternate histories going around lately, especially after the Distant Prince came to Ash Beach. Marrying Cecil. Could that be untrue? But he couldn’t remember anything else. He didn’t even have any idea of where he should be if the University of What It Is hadn’t sent him and his team here. Hadn’t John Peters, the farmer, remembered _two days before with his brother_ side-by-side with _two days before without his brother_?

Carlos quickly climbed off of the cot, trying to shake off the unpleasant thoughts. He rushed for the door - yes, if this were the lab, that would be the front door - and threw it open. Big Rico’s next door. NVCR’s tower in the distance. His gaze flicked upward. He frowned. The sky was not taupe or turquoise or indigo or violet or pink or coal dust...not even void, initially upsetting but now familiar. Actually...maybe it was void. But not the kind he’d gotten used to. This kind had depth. It was a void that might, somewhere, end.

Carlos ducked back into the lab, fighting to keep his breathing even. Okay, probably not his Night Vale. But he only had one set of memories; everyone he could remember being affected by Ash Beach had two sets. Evidence suggested that he was real, and really married...didn’t it? Carlos just had to keep calm, find out why the lab was empty. He could think of only one source of information that wasn’t likely to be fatal to tap into which was also generally correct and reliable. Even if there was a risk it would hurt, if it turned out that Carlos truly wasn’t real.

* * *

Getting into NVCR felt deceptively easy. His anxiety built as he walked through the halls - by the time he reached the men’s bathroom, he couldn’t take it anymore. He ducked inside and sucked down a few breaths. He was startled by a haunting yowl. It was immediately, soothingly familiar. Because that was the  _ friendly _ haunting yowl. A small smile bloomed across his face.

“Well, hi, Khoshekh.” He crossed the room, wishing he had gloves - petting Khoshekh was calming even with his allergy. He checked the bowls to take his mind off what he was preparing to do. He poked around in the food dish to settle food into the hole left by whisker fatigue. Then, he dumped what was in the water bowl and refilled it from the tap, just so it was fresh. He nudged it as close to Khoshekh as he dared, and then leaned against the counter, watching him lap at the water. “Still stuck, huh? No StrexPets in this Night Vale, I guess.” He watched quietly for a beat. “Where’s your radio host, huh? Doing his show? At home? Getting lunch? I’m a little scared. I don’t think he’ll know me...but neither do you, I think, and  _ you _ trust me. Let’s hope Cecil feels the same way.” He started to reach for Khoshekh’s ear out of habit.

“Um...” Carlos jumped and whirled around, his lab coat flaring out. “You’re talking to the station cat. I thought only I do that.”

“Oh, uh, hi, Cecil - Mr. Palmer? I -”

“No, Cecil’s fine,” he interrupted, looking at Carlos with a strangely suspicious glint in his eye. “But...who are you, and how did you get here?”

Yeah. He was right. That stung like hell.

“I’m Carlos - a scientist. I’m from a different Night Vale, I think.” _I hope,_ Carlos did not say.

“A different Night Vale?” Cecil echoed. “Different how?”

“Well, the sky’s never this kind of void. And the lab in my Night Vale has been occupied for five years now.”

“Five years!” Cecil blurted. “Are you saying that you - that your Night Vale - is it still connected to the rest of the world?”

“I think so.” Carlos tried not to let it sound like a question. “Should be. So you guys got cut off before scientists arrived? You even got cut off from Desert Bluffs?”

“Even them.” Cecil sounded mournful. Carlos’s heart broke when he didn’t follow it up with some kind of ‘thank goodness for that, right?’ joke. “...It was decades ago.” Oh. So he had probably worn through it in the first year or two of isolation. Carlos frowned. He didn’t know what to say next. The silence was interrupted by a guitar strumming loudly.

**_The old church down the street_ **

**_Concrete beneath my feet_ **

Carlos fumbled for the pocket of his lab coat, eyes wide. He hit the ‘accept’ button and raised it to his ear, his eyes fixed on a still, confused Cecil.

“Carlos?” said Cecil’s voice, coming out of the phone. “Where are you? You weren’t at home when I woke up, and when I brought some lunch for you to the lab, the scientists said they hadn’t seen you since last night...”

“I’m - I’m okay. I think,” Carlos said. “I’m...I’m not sure where I am.”

“Is it - is it the desert otherworld?” Cecil was admirably hiding a tremble in his voice.

“No - at least, not in the way you mean. There’s an empty lab here, and a Big Rico’s, and an NVCR where Khoshekh is still fixed by the sink.”

“Are you saying you’re in another Night Vale? Are you sure it’s safe?” Cecil asked urgently.

“I’m not, but I’m not sure how to get home,” Carlos admitted. There was a tang of terror in the silence that followed. Carlos felt like promising to get home soon would be cheap, after he’d said it would take a week, max, to get out of the otherworld. “...The sky is a different kind of void here,” he said, trying to disperse the silence. “And there’s some kind of rolling thunder, sometimes loud and close-sounding, and sometimes softer...farther.”

“Just - just work on getting home, okay?” Carlos shut his eyes against the tearfulness of Cecil’s voice.

“Okay,” he whispered. “...Honey, just call if you need me, okay? I promise to answer as long as I have service.”

“Okay.” Cecil hung up so quickly that Carlos winced, hanging his head.

“Fuck,” he murmured. The Cecil in front of him raised his eyebrows. Carlos made a face that was apparently eloquent enough for Cecil to say simply ‘ah’, and make a sympathetic face in return.

“Can I help?” Cecil asked. There was still some tension in his frame that Carlos couldn’t decipher, but at least Cecil hadn’t dismissed him out-of-hand.

“I was hoping so,” Carlos admitted. He opened his mouth to say something else, but was interrupted by a truly tremendous growl of his stomach. His mouth snapped shut and he felt his cheeks heat.

“Maybe we should discuss it over Big Rico’s?” Cecil suggested wryly. Carlos nodded mutely, and Cecil led the way out.

* * *

“...Do you not like pizza?” Cecil asked, after several minutes of exposition on how this Night Vale had been cut off from the rest of the world, during which Carlos had never touched his pizza.

“That’s not it,” Carlos admitted. “In mine, a little ways back, the wheat and wheat by-products -”

“Turned into snakes?” Cecil finished. Carlos nodded. “The same thing happened here. City Council discussed banning it, but in the end, they knew better. John and Jim Peters could only do so much, y’know? And now that it’s just Jim...”

“What happened to John?” Carlos asked.

“...He was lost to the War.”

“The...Blood-Space War?”

“No! The war with the Apparitions!” Cecil cried, gesturing wildly at the sky. Carlos frowned and glanced skyward out a window.

“...Okay.  Our Night Vales are definitely different,” Carlos hedged. “These Apparitions, are they...actively violent?”

“Yes! But slow. And for the most part, they ignore us. But when they don’t...” Cecil shuddered. “I can show you the memorial.” Cecil pushed back from the table. Carlos took a large bite of his slice of pizza and tried to chew quietly as he followed.

* * *

Cecil and Carlos stood quietly before the memorial. A giant monument, of some shiny metal. It was a foot...a foot eighteen times larger than feet had a right to be. Carlos had done a lot of mental math regarding huge feet during his time in the Desert Otherworld. Doug and Alicia were 8.33 repeating times his size...this was more than double that. It must belong to a being so large that they wouldn’t even know they stepped on you.

“A lot of people would’ve preferred the giant orb,” Cecil said idly. “It was the first time the sky had changed since The Great Change. And at least the giant orb was not, itself, malicious. It was from the Apparitions, though, I’m sure of it. They never bothered us before that.”

It was a foot so large it wouldn’t even know it stepped on you, encased in what looked like a canvas shoe - hi-tops visibly ending after the leg of the pants started, laces wide and flat as opposed to compact and round, with rubber (Well, metal that looked like rubber) over the toes.

“Steve was one of the ones who went after the orb, but before the Apparition’s foot.  _ I’d _ prefer he were recognized that way.”

It was an impractical kind of shoe for lab work - no support, and the canvas didn’t really offer protection. But it was a serviceable enough shoe outside of the lab. The kind of thing some massive person who wouldn't even know they stepped on you might wear to go to a party, and then crash an entirely separate party in.

“At least it’s a beautiful foot.”

The kind of shoe some massive idiot might plant in the middle of a tiny city to prove his stupid, stupid point.

“But what do you think...Carlos?”

The kind of shoe that was exactly like the beat-up, blue canvas shoe that Carlos was wearing right now, still with drops of blood from when the tiny city had attacked.

Retaliated.

Instead of answering, Carlos whipped out his phone again, hoping and praying. And of course it said he had service. Because even if his phone was eighteen times smaller than it should be, he was still right in the middle of the same towers that always worked for it.

“I think I know how to get home,” Carlos blurted the moment Cecil picked up.

“Already?” Cecil asked, sounding overjoyed.

“Well. I can get home. But I’m not perfectly myself at the moment. But I’ll figure it out!” He promised. “Just, babe, please - do me a favor, just one favor, and you’ll see exactly what I mean.”

“What is it?”

“Go to the lab - I think Anna has a UV lamp, kept it from when she had to deal with seasonal depression back at UWII - grab the UV lamp, and come to the pin retrieval area of lane five.”

Cecil immediately sucked in a terrified breath. “Carlos -”

“I’m fine! I promise, I’m fine, just - I have some amends to make.”

“Carlos, they almost killed you!” Cecil shouted on the other end of the line.

“I know,” Carlos said softly. “But I’m stuck here until we figure out how this happened. And I don’t even know for sure I’m right. So just...bring the UV lamp, and we’ll find out?”

“...I think we need a vacation when you get back. Not a stay-cation, not some desert otherworld trip...a real vacation.”

“That would be lovely, honey.” Carlos smiled.

“...See you in fifteen minutes.”

“Thank you.”

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Carlos disconnected the call and lowered the phone, glancing at the other Cecil - the tiny Cecil - whose face had now turned very grim.

“Apparition,” he accused quietly. And Carlos knew it was a mercy that he said it quietly, considering what he could do to Telly and Steve with only his words.

“I was only thinking about proving my point. I’m sorry.”

“What point was there to prove?”

Carlos hesitated. “I’d only been here a year. Teddy Williams forming a militia and putting ‘they are here’ on every screen seemed so over-the-top, so unnecessary, even for Night Vale. So I went to the pin retrieval area and started poking around, doing science. I stuck an arm in first, so I was less likely to fall - I think I was trying to make an argument about the steepness - and that’s how I noticed the perspective wasn’t right for a city miles beneath the earth. I had twelve feet of string - just because, I don’t even know why - and I dangled it, just to see.”

“There is a rope in the sand wastes,” Cecil said solemnly, probably quoting. “Is there still a world beyond our town? Do they plan to invade us? Do they plan to send aid?” Carlos waited, but it seemed Cecil was done.

“And it pooled up, feet of it! So I pulled it back up, and I went back out to Jeremy’s party -”

“The day of the attack was Jeremy Godfried’s birthday,” Cecil recalled.

“I got everyone to come back...and then I dropped into the hole to show them that there was no need for a militia. It had taken the people from the city beneath the earth a year and they weren’t even all the way to the top of the hole yet! I was sure there was no need for weapons, but I suppose I hadn’t considered that the city was set to ‘assume everything is hostile for your own safety’...and I didn’t think to watch where my feet landed.”

The silence stretched so long that Carlos feared Cecil was going to call out to the Sheriff’s Secret Police or some other group that could offer retribution.

“...You didn’t cause as much damage as the other one,” Cecil conceded.

“Huh." A beat. "Does that mean you guys still have an Apache Tracker?”

“Ugh!” The first normal reaction all day! “He says he’s participating in the War with his ‘ancient Indian magics’ but he’s somehow conveniently hiding in Radon Canyon every time there’s a threat from an Apparition. What happened to yours?”

“He was the one who pulled me out of the city.”

“So he caused the majority of the destruction...what an  _ asshole _ .” Carlos tried not to laugh with relief. Something about this tiny Cecil was normal, and he wasn’t really that far from home.

Cecil tensed up beside him with the arrival of a sound like an imminent rock slide.

“Get down,” he said tersely, shoving at Carlos’s shoulder. He went, but all the while, he was looking up. He saw the edges of a pair of shoes appear out of the sky - the bottoms of a pair of crocs. If he squinted and followed them up, he could see the outlines of pants, and a shirt, and hair, and above that, tiled markings in the sky. Rocks (pebbles, his mind argued. Boulders, his eyes claimed) shifted at the edge, tumbling to rest at the outskirts of the city. A few moments later, Carlos’s phone rang.

“What should I do now?” Carlos could feel Cecil's voice in his chest, like the bass at a concert just barely too far away to truly hear. He couldn’t make it out like he ought to be able to - but of course it would sound awfully low and slow to him. Cecil was huge. Only the phone made him sound normal.

“Can you set the lamp down? Keep the base well away from the edge, but point the bulb in towards the city.”

“They have their own light,” Cecil complained. “I can see  _ tons _ of lights on in the buildings right now.” Carlos watched the giant figure - the Apparition - wedge its phone between its ear and shoulder. He watched it bend to set the lamp at the edge and adjust the bulb so it could shine down on them.

“Ceec. The tiny city. It’s a wary desert community, where there is no sun, there is no moon, and mysterious lights - well, I don’t know what the mysterious lights do. Cecil, it’s a tiny Night Vale. They don’t have a sun or a moon. They don’t have gasoline or outside food - please. We can give them this.” Cecil, beside him, was staring. Oh, yeah. He’d never said exactly who he was on the phone with, had he?

His Cecil hesitated on the line, but he watched him reach out to click the light on. Carlos realized his mistake a moment too late, yelping and ducking his head, blinking rapidly.

“Carlos? Carlos, are you okay?” Cecil asked frantically.

“Yeah, fine. I was just looking up.”

There was more rock slide-rumbling above, and then he saw Cecil’s face very close, level with the lamp.

“I can’t see you,” he said mournfully. “Oh! But that looks like your beautiful foot! ...Why does it look like your beautiful foot?”

“It’s a memorial,” Carlos said. “Hang on, actually. You’re going in my pocket for a second.” He stood up and pulled himself onto the pedestal for the memorial, and then on top of the foot. He took his phone back out and waved madly. “Is that better?”

“I - I see a tiny figure, waving.” His voice wavered. Carlos couldn’t tell if it was sadness or relief, even as he stared up into Cecil's face. “And...and tiny people pouring out of tiny homes to look up at...at a tiny sun.”

“I don’t know what did this to me. So I can’t promise to get home right away. But I can promise to science the shit out of it in the meantime, okay? And you really, truly know exactly where I am.”

“Yes. Right. Yeah,” Cecil said, voice thick. “...Will you listen to my show tonight?”

“If I can. Just a second.” He hit mute, just for a moment. “Hey, Cecil, what frequency is your station?”

“631 AM.”

“Oh, good.” He unmuted himself. “If the radios here can get 301, I will. Try listening to 631, okay? I’ll tell everyone lots of stories about giant Cecil.”

An arm descended over the side of the hole. Carlos heard screams as people who came out to look at the ‘sun’ retreated back in terror. The arm stopped short, and the fingers stretched out toward him. Carlos stretched his arm and fingers out in turn.

“I love you, Cecil.”

“I love you, too, pocket-sized Carlos. Hurry home, okay?”

“I will.”

**Author's Note:**

> potential other works in this vein: tiny!steve finally makes it to the top and cecil and carlos are there to help him even though he is trying to shoot or otherwise harm them.
> 
> pocket!Carlos hanging out with his husband before this is fixed.
> 
> The tiny Night Valeans get unleashed on big Night Vale and become full-on Borrowers.


End file.
